Author Topic: Hilary Clinton: "Deep-Seated.. Religious Beliefs..Have To Be Changed" (Read 3727 times)

PerEvangelicaDicta · « **on:** April 29, 2015, 09:27:32 AM »

‘Deep-Seated Cultural Codes, Religious Beliefs And Structural Biases Have To Be Changed’

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NEW YORK — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took a feminist tone on Thursday. She told attendees at the sixth annual Women in The World Summit that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed” for the sake of giving women access to “reproductive health care and safe childbirth.”

“Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice — not just on paper,” Clinton said.

WATCH (Excerpt begins at 8:26):

“Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will,” she explained. “And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed. As I have said and as I believe, the advancement of the full participation of women and girls in every aspect of their societies is the great unfinished business of the 21st century and not just for women but for everyone — and not just in far away countries but right here in the United States.”

Clinton also took a shot at Republicans who oppose amnesty legislation, saying, “There are those who offer themselves as leaders who would deport mothers working to give their children a better life, rather than risk the ire of talk radio.”

The event took place at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. Media CEO Tina Brown welcomed other women to the stage, including Ashley Judd and Helen Mirren, as well as numerous female political activists and businesswomen.

Viva Cristo Rey · « **Reply #1 on:** April 30, 2015, 01:10:24 PM »

Bengazi

Dolores · « **Reply #2 on:** April 30, 2015, 01:45:39 PM »

Even if we take abortion out of the equation, I don't understand how anyone can honestly call things like birth control or sterilization "health care." The whole purpose of medicine is to repair injuries to the body and cure the body of diseases. Birth control and sterilization work to stop the body from functioning properly. They are the very opposite of medicine and health care.

ClarkSmith · « **Reply #3 on:** May 01, 2015, 06:41:11 PM »

Girls, happiness is being CEO of some soulless corporation. And do you know what happiness is not? Happiness is not holding your very own newborn baby in your arms. You have frozen eggs and maybe someday you will get around to finding that surrogate in India but really that hope is all you need. You don't want to be tied down by kids anyway. Having kids is what this sexist society expects from you. You want to live your golden years doing fun things. Sure you will die alone but at least you died doing the things you loved. Right?

poche · « **Reply #4 on:** May 05, 2015, 03:57:25 AM »

I have always been in favor of safe childbirth. I don't think I will have to change any religious beliefs to be in favor of safe childbirth.

poche · « **Reply #5 on:** May 05, 2015, 04:02:15 AM »

I think that the best reproductive health is in the environment of a commited monogamous relationship (St Thomas Aquinus called it marriage) between a man and a woman where the two are faithful to one another.
:idea: :idea: :idea:

Traditional Guy 20 · « **Reply #6 on:** May 07, 2015, 03:20:01 PM »

Quote from: ClarkSmith

Girls, happiness is being CEO of some soulless corporation. And do you know what happiness is not? Happiness is not holding your very own newborn baby in your arms. You have frozen eggs and maybe someday you will get around to finding that surrogate in India but really that hope is all you need. You don't want to be tied down by kids anyway. Having kids is what this sexist society expects from you. You want to live your golden years doing fun things. Sure you will die alone but at least you died doing the things you loved. Right?

Ah it is much more than that even. Remember girls that we men are your sworn enemy. We are the ones who oppress you to the "glamour" of being a wife and mother and that we oppress your freedoms, instead of you getting a career and advancing in money and fortune without that patriarchal tyrant and those spoiled brats at home who oppress your fun. *sarcasm*

Of course this is the mindset Jєωιѕн Marxists and Jєωιѕн intellectuals have put forth to women in the last 100 years.

McFiggly · « **Reply #7 on:** May 10, 2015, 01:31:17 PM »

Quote from: http://www.waragainstbeing.com/node/51

Platonism: The Foundation Stone of Western Gnosticism

Western Christianity (Catholicism), possessing as it does an Infallible Magisterium and the Papacy, provided a much greater resistance to Gnostic principles. It will be my purpose here, however, to prove that we are now in a stranglehold of Gnostic spirituality which far outstrips any which existed in the early centuries of the Church.

We could in fact run a sort of imaginary line down through the history of the Catholic Church (we will not here be dealing with Protestantism) separating Gnostic-tainted philosophy, theology, and spirituality from that which is truly Catholic. What this largely entails since the 13th century is a choice between Platonism and Thomism. But even before Thomas, this distinction between a spirituality which reaches upwards in imitation of Christ, as contrasted with that which seeks an illumination from within or below, is often starkly evident.
The History of Western Gnosticism is more complex than that of the East. It entails the unraveling down through the centuries of three fundamental intellectual aberrations, all of which are to be found in Plato.

The first of these consists in what is commonly called Platonic Idealism. The word "Idealism” is singularly appropriate since it denotes the fact that Plato taught that the Ideas of things are more real than the existing things themselves.

These Ideas exist ultimately in pure Forms which are completely separate from phenomena, but from which (somehow) the illusory shadow-land of our phenomenological world is derived. The penultimate Form is the Good, which is also the One from which all the other Forms are derived. In Plato’s Idealism we are therefore again confronted with the first principle of Gnosticism: the existence of an Absolute, completely separate and untouched by the world. There is no real explanation given by Plato for the decay away from the Ideal world (all men were once there – Plato definitely believed in the pre-existence of the human soul in complete union with this Ideal world) into the shadow-world of phenomena. Although there is some reference in Timaeus to the demiurge and to created gods, this is usually not considered something that can be taken seriously in Plato’s philosophy. We are left in other words with the same basic dilemma as exists in all forms of Gnosticism: how to account for a “decayed” world of finitude and phenomena somehow coming forth from an Absolute which is Infinitely perfect.

The second Gnostic principle integral to Plato’s philosophy is that Gnosis or “salvation” is not accomplished through receiving truth and grace from above, but is rather a Dialectical Process –an evolutionary process of uncovering that which is within. At this point we move from Plato’s metaphysics to his epistemology. The entire thrust of the Dialogues is upon revealing the dialectical process by which man is enabled to ascend from the delusional world of phenomena to the real world of Ideas. This obviously entails an ascent of gnosis.

As already mentioned, Plato believed that all men pre-existed in the real world of pure Forms or Ideas. Plato’s concept of gnosis is therefore established in the principle that all real knowledge is recollection (a process of “return”). The “ascent” to Gnosis is, consequently, a descent into remembering what man knew before he suffered a fall away into entrapment in a body and into the world of phenomena. This “recollection” is realized through a dialectical growth in knowledge ascending through four different levels: 1) the illusory world of phenomena; 2) knowledge of the physical sciences; 3) knowledge of mathematics; 4) all of this “dialectic” culminating in the final stage which is constituted as an intuitive, contemplative knowledge of the Pure Forms or Ideas.

In The Republic, Plato details the social engineering necessary in order that this evolutionary and hierarchical structure of gnosis might be reflected in an orderly society. All children are to be taken away from their parents in infancy and raised by the State. Depending upon abilities revealed in childhood, they are to be permanently assigned to one of the three classes , corresponding to the threefold structure of the human soul – rational, “spirited”, and appetitive. Even the elite – those who are born with the highest rational qualities to achieve such gnosis in this life – must be taken away from their homes in infancy and rigorously trained and elevated in knowledge through the four stages, this process hopefully culminating in true contemplation of the Ideas at about the age of 60, at which time they become worthy of the position of “philosopher-kings”. The vast majority of men never ascend above the first stage in this life, and of course those in stages 2 and 3 also do not reach true gnosis. Plato therefore believed in the transmigration of souls (reincarnation). In the Dialogue of Phaedo, Socrates even speculates that a villain in this life might come back as a wolf, or that a good citizen who never learned philosophy, but yet lived a disciplined life, might return as a bee, an ant, or a human being. The entire process to human fulfillment is thus to be seen as deeply embedded in evolutionary thinking concerning the ultimate destiny of the human soul.

The third principle, intimately tied to the second and providing the dynamic which leads to this dialectical, evolutionary growth in gnosis, is that of dialogue. All of Plato’s philosophical works come to us in the form of Dialogues. The Socratic Dialogue is maieutical. This term describes a teaching method based on the principal that truth and salvation is not something which is received from above, but rather must be born from something that is within man. The term is derived from the Greek word for obstetric. Truth is a birth accompanied by labor.

The essence of the Socratic method is therefore a dialectical dialogue in which opposing views are discussed on a specific issue in order to engage in a process of critical thinking which gives birth to a synthesis, which is constituted by an intuitive, contemplative gnosis of the Truth already existing within man. Presumably, all of this culminates in Gnosis of the One (the Good), this effecting the final Gnosis and liberation of the human soul.

It is characteristic of most Thomists that they see only Platonic Idealism, and not also the other two Platonic principles which I have mentioned above, as constituting the source of Gnostic thinking present in Catholic thought down through the centuries. This eviscerates our understanding of the depths of destruction inherent in Platonic thought, obscures our ability to perceive the three distinct expressions of Platonic Gnosticism as they present themselves in individual thinkers and movements, and undermines our ability to penetrate to the historical depths of our present crisis. As we shall see, it is in fact the merging of these three foundational aberrations in Catholic thought which culminates in Modernism, and the coming to fruition of Gnosticism in the West. This, in turn, is preparing the way for a merging of Catholic Gnosticism with that of the Eastern Orthodox, a union which, I believe, will facilitate the coming of Antichrist.

In The Republic Plato talks about the lost city of Atlantis. Atlantis, according to him, was a highly advanced society which was built on philosophical principles. It was ruled by a council of enlightened men who used mathematics to control the population and preserve order. Mysteriously, Atlantis was lost in the ocean.

Atlantis in fact represents rebellion against God and the society of man prior to the great flood. Atlantis being lost in the ocean is a symbol of the flood.
The modern world is called the New Atlantis (see Francis Bacon's the New Atlantis, written in Elizabethan England, where he essentially lays down the blueprints for the modern world, a society ruled by a priesthood of scientific experts who rule by knowlegde of nature's laws).

In other words, this idea of a society ruled by scientific knowledge, "gnosis", is very ancient. It has been passed down through the ages by the satanic cults that men like Plato and Francis Bacon were involved with. The Masons are the modern bearers of this ancient creed. It's the idea that man should be as God through knowledge, and should make up his own law and his own society without God. In other words, there's nothing knew under the sun. Feminism is witchcraft (some have gone so far as to call abortion a sacrament, which reveals the underlying demonic inspiration of Feminism).

Satan has been spreading this doctrine since the garden of Eden. He wants men to believe that they are sufficient to themselves and have no need of God's grace. Abortion is just one, a particularly abominable one, of the ways men have neglected divine and natural law to follow their own law, equipped with the power of science. Clinton has an ancient deep-seated belief of her own, the idea that man is his own God and can make paradise for himself through knowledge.

PerEvangelicaDicta · « **Reply #8 on:** May 10, 2015, 03:49:23 PM »

Outstanding reference and comment, McFiggly.

Graham · « **Reply #9 on:** May 11, 2015, 08:28:10 PM »

"None of the philosophers have come so close to us as the Platonists have." - St. Augustine

McFiggly · « **Reply #10 on:** May 12, 2015, 03:44:33 AM »

Quote from: Graham

"None of the philosophers have come so close to us as the Platonists have." - St. Augustine

I expected this comment. There's a quote by St. Robert Bellarmine where he says its precisely the "closeness" of Platonism that makes it more dangerous than Aristotelianism.

I know that you like Plato Graham as I've seen some of your posts before on Plato. I remember you saying that it was Nietzsche who woke you up from sentimental slumbers, and that Plato prepared the way for you to Catholicism. Actually, I took an identical path myself, but we both know that Nietzsche is more or less a Satanist who undermines all objective truth and preaches the dominance of the will unguided by truth or morality. I don't know about you but it was seeing the incoherence of Nietzsche's philosophy that lead me to the philosopher Nietzsche perhaps despised the most, Plato. The good thing about Plato is that he's a kind of antidote to materialism in that his idealism is so strong that you can't read him for very long without realizing that you do in fact have a soul, and so in age of mass materialism Plato can be very useful as a counterbalance. However, for every one of us who came to Christ through Plato like St. Augustine, how many went instead to the Neoplatonists or to the Hindus or to some other sect?

When I allude to Plato being part of a satanic sect I'm alluding to the ancient mystery schools. I heard somewhere that Socrates himself never thought it was worth joining a "mystery school", but that Plato did and that he put the doctrines of these schools into his dialogues is obvious. For example, the transmigration of souls / reincarnation. This myth had been floating around the world long before Plato was born, and it floats around still today. It undermines the true story of salvation, it also undermines the very basis of our identity by making our bodies out to be recyclable husks that can be thrown away for a new one an infinite number of times, which leads to the Manichaen/Gnostic tendency of hatred of the body that Plato himself is suspect of. Another thing. Plato's God, or the form of the Good, is emphatically not a person. It's more a geometrical figure, an abstraction. This heresy is one of the worst, I believe. Instead of seeing God as a venerable old man on a throne as the prophet Ezekiel saw Him, they see Him instead as a triangle or a circle, or a triangle within a circle, like the Brahmins do. They also tend to look down on those who see God as a person (or three persons) as crude thinkers, sentimentalists, not capable of abstract thought. It's this tendency which I believe gives Plato's dialogues that unmistakable light-hearted, Pelagian tone. I think you know what I'm talking about when I say this. Socrates is an endlessly jovial spirit whose "fear of God", though admittedly present in the dialogues, is not at all like the fear of God we know. Reducing God to a geometrical abstraction not only undermines the fear one might have of Him (who is afraid of a triangle?), it also undermines the love of Him by reducing into a purely mathematical, contemplative, intellectual love as opposed to a fully human love which involves all the faculties of our soul. Also, as the text I quoted in my previous post played out, the entire plan of salvation in Plato's account is radically different from our own. His is indeed an evolutionary process which is about releasing the divinity within us so that it can return to the World of Ideas where it belongs. This is Pelagian to the extreme in that it puts far too much emphasis on our own part in our salvation than on God; salvation is not seen as a gift benevolently bestowed from above, but as something that we work out for ourselves through a dialectical process. What prayer is to us, dialogue is to the Platonist. One more thing. I take Plato's plan for the ideal state in the Republic seriously; you can read it allegorically as applying to the ideal ordering of one's soul, but I don't think that discredits the literal interpretation. As Plato sees salvation as coming from a dialectical process rather than from above, he seeks his Laws for an ideal state not in the way of Moses, which is to receive them from above, but to work them out for reasoning. That this reasoning process ends up going so against God's natural order that it would remove children from their parents and educate women to be equal to men, is proof of just how inadequate the dialectic is in reaching the truth. This myth of an Atlantis ruled by scientific knowledge harkens back to before the flood, it harkens back to the tower of Babel, it harkens back to Babylon and Egypt, and more recently to Bacon's The New Atlantis, and I think Atlantis represents Satan's view of the ideal society since ancient times as much as Jerusalem represents God's, and that it's he who has been keeping this myth alive in the mystery schools even to today.

The closest I have found to the truth among the pagans is not Plato but the Stoics. Read the hymn of Cleanthes or the Golden Sayings of Epictetus. However, overall I am struck by the utter uniqueness of our faith in the history of the world. I know that some of the Fathers thought that Plato and Aristotle where preparation for the gospel and that this opinion has continued since then. Despite this, I think that Plato has more in common with the Hindus than with us, and that Aristotle can lead to a rationalist or materialist philosophy. For every St. Augustine redeeming Plato and every St. Thomas redeeming Aristotle, there's a Pico Mirandola mixing a false Neoplatonic mysticism with Catholicism, and a William of Occam sending Aristotle in the direction of nominalism and materialism. In other words, I don't think that Plato or Aristotle are in heaven, and I think that Greek philosophy in and of itself is dangerous. It's only by God's grace that we came to Him stumbling through Nietzsche and Plato. We can't put that down to Plato and we certainly can't put it down to Nietzsche.

One more thing. There's a certain sense in which Plato is superior to Aristotle, even though I think St. Thomas has proven that Aristotle's metaphysics is more comfortable to our Faith than is Plato's. That's this: Plato is far more a mystic and poetic and therefore you are more likely to have a life-changing epiphany reading Plato than you are Aristotle. In a way, Plato's dialogues aren't about any particular doctrine but are about forming the habit of intellectual humility and about achieving that mystical state where one comes face to face with one's ignorance and with the reality of one's intellectual soul. This mysticism is what makes Plato more loveable than the somewhat dry Aristotle, but it's also what makes him more dangerous, as St. Robert Bellarmine has said. It opens the way for a false mysticism to enter.

McFiggly · « **Reply #11 on:** May 12, 2015, 03:53:57 AM »

Quote from: PerEvangelicaDicta

Outstanding reference and comment, McFiggly.

His article on Eastern Orthodoxy is very good
http://www.waragainstbeing.com/partiii

McFiggly · « **Reply #12 on:** May 13, 2015, 07:39:17 AM »

In defense of Plato I think that the negative method he uses which aims to make the soul aware of its own ignorance in regards to ultimate matters is a profound medicine which cures it of intellectual pride and opens up our mind to God. Aristotle developed a consistent system of thought which has been useful to the Church in defining doctrine in a precise way, but his method of analyzing things at its worst leads to that over curiosity we see today in regards to the natural world, which makes people intellectually arrogant and forgetful if the highest things. That painting of Raphael's with Plato pointing up to heaven and Aristotle with his hand over the earth explains it well. Plato's philosophy is more contemplative and engages the intuitive mind more than the rational mind, which means that it is closer in spirit to Catholicism which is based on the contemplation of the divine mysteries of Jesus Christ, than is Aristotle's which is more about training the rational mind to reason well.

I actually like Plato a lot, I just think that he came under the influence of the mystery schools and that some of his doctrines are perverse. The awareness of one's ignorance and the immediate perception of one's intuitive mind that Plato's dialogues induces is at least as good a preliminary induction into the faith as Aristotle's philosophy is. A degenerate Aristotelianism will lead to incessant and pointless reasoning and analysis to the detriment of one's piece of mind and one's sanity even. This habitual reasoning is actually quite common today, people call it "analysis paralysis." Prince Hamlet suffered from it. A degenerate Platonism I think leads to an excessive doubt that one can know anything, which leads to Quietism.

PerEvangelicaDicta · « **Reply #13 on:** May 15, 2015, 12:55:17 PM »

Quote from: McFiggly

Quote from: PerEvangelicaDicta
Outstanding reference and comment, McFiggly.

His article on Eastern Orthodoxy is very good
http://www.waragainstbeing.com/partiii

For what it's worth, all the commentary at this site is excellent. I'm slowly working my way through each part.
Thank you for bringing it to attention in a few threads, McFiggly.

Graham · « **Reply #14 on:** May 15, 2015, 07:18:07 PM »

We should bear in mind that Plato lived before Christ, so lacked the benefit of supernatural revelation. It's to be expected that his natural theology would be deficient and erroneous in many ways.

But exceptionally holy and erudite men like Boethius and Augustine saw fit to praise him and incorporate his influence in their own work. Christian philosophy therefore owes Plato a great deal. I'm not going to second guess their attitude because McFiggly likes to fling around the word Satanist.

It's at least rather off-the-wall and quirky to accuse Platonism of a prominent role in facilitating the coming of the Antichrist, when it's clear that Plato has had no noteworthy direct traction among Modernist heretics and materialist heathens. Analyzing modernity and its errors through the lens of gnosticism is by now a well-worn trope. That's not to say it hasn't some truth - and maybe more than some - but overall I think that when one is very familiar with a certain set of errors, all other errors tend to look like a manifestation of that set.